There is, to me, an integral link between cycling and outdoor markets. Both encourage a neighborliness even in the middle of urban space. Both recall us to fresh air and the living earth. Both reconnect us with our bodies’ senses.

My partner-in-crime asked on the ride in, while we stood shivering in the rain changing a bike tube, what I would have thought of joining my path with his if I’d been able to see into this drippy darkening moment along the roadside.

Sitting down to dinner our last evening, I was able to ask back, “And what would you have thought, if you’d seen yourself sitting down to this for dinner – ?”

But it’s been years since he moved beyond meat-and-potatoes. We’ve both learned something over the years about the good life.

And we are so lucky now to have so many wonderful varieties available. When I was growing up apples came as Delicious – Red or Golden – and that was about all. Farmer’s markets (and bicycles) give me hope for the future!

Did you know that “Uncle Paul” is LDS? He was in my ward in Tigard. Every time I visit his fruit stand on Hawthorne I feel like it is extra special, because when we shared wards is when he was trying to get the permits to have that place. It was horrible….the city put him through the ringer. He worked so hard and never gave up on his dream of “Uncle Paul’s.”

Didn’t have a clue. I do love to hear about hard-worked dreams like that coming true !

Every time we biked past during the weekend there were people walking in and walking out with fresh produce. It feels like the quintessential Portland neighborhood place, quirky + wholesomely wholegrained. When we made our tangelo/mandarin stop the small shop held the two or three young guys running the counter and a young-30s woman in plaid flannel, a laughing man and woman in their late 20s, 3 Indian men with fresh tilaka marking their foreheads, and an older woman, deliciously choosy about each piece of fruit she picked up.